


the butterfly effect

by punkrockbadger



Series: rewrite potter [14]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Memory Alteration, The memory modification is nonconsensual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-12
Updated: 2016-02-12
Packaged: 2018-05-19 22:37:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5983030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punkrockbadger/pseuds/punkrockbadger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hermione trudged back to her desk, nearly collapsing into her chair as she rubbed at her forehead. This definitely qualified as a panic moment. </p><p>And, as Hermione often did in panic moments, she came up with a plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the butterfly effect

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't leave you guys hanging for a week, so here's the butterfly effect! This is a fic that I've been talking to Lai about writing for a long time now, and I'm really excited to finally put it out there. It's got big implications on the rest of the series, and I hope some of you give it a read, and let me know what you think! Hopefully it's a fun read, even if the subject matter is heavy, and we'll see you guys with the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Rise of the Resistance next Friday!
> 
> -S (and L, in spirit)

Hermione received the letter in the morning, while on her way home from piano lessons, which she had been taking from Mrs. Acosta, who lived two streets over, ever since she was eight years old. She was quite good at the piano, and had been from the start, thanks to her dedication to the craft and natural talent for things involving hard work, but she found herself slipping, now that she wasn’t able to practice for months at a time. She wasn’t sure wizards even played pianos. She’d have to ask Ron, the next time she wrote him-- he’d likely have an answer.

She could tell Mrs. Acosta was quite disappointed in her recent lack of practicing, and that thought was weighing heavily on her mind, a package of guilt waiting for her to unwrap it. Hedwig found her contemplating this at the doorstep, while fumbling for the right key on the ring she’d grabbed off the kitchen counter in a rush to get to class on time, and neatly dropped the letter in Hermione’s outstretched hand. Hedwig then proceeded to perch on the edge of the brick stairs, as if expecting Hermione to write back right then and there.

“I’ll have to get inside first, before I can read it.” Hermione said evenly, finally locating the key she should have been using all along (helpfully labeled with bright yellow tape, the word “home” scrawled upon it in black permanent marker), and inserting it in the lock, opening the front door. Hedwig found herself a new perch, just inside the front door, on top of the ornate coat rack that no one used but her mother insisted on keeping, and Hermione led the owl up to her room, thinking about how, just four years earlier, she would have considered talking to an owl as if it could understand her a sign of madness.

But the Hermione she was now, smack dab in the middle of the summer of 1995, was very different from the Hermione of four summers ago. She had grown taller, although not by much, her brown, frizzy hair had grown longer, and she had grown much smarter in a multitude of ways, both involving magic and not. But some things, she thought fondly, as she entered her room, had not changed.

Despite her best efforts, Hermione was still shorter than both Harry and Ron, although she had almost caught up to Harry within the last school year, though his gangly frame suggested he had a fair bit of growing left to do. She was still the best of them at conflict resolution, and she was still louder than both of her boys combined, at least with regard to answering questions in the classroom. Those things, she suspected, as she sat down at her desk, would never change.

And then she opened the letter, and everything did change. Just, as usual, not in the way she’d expected.

“Voldemort is back. Stay watchful. Love, H.” The letter read, in Harry’s messy scrawl. She didn’t quite read the words, the first time around, instead acerbically commenting on his deplorable handwriting, but when she read the next line, she went back to the first, her breath catching in her throat.

Hermione looked to Hedwig, as if she could confirm or deny this disaster, and when the owl remained watching her carefully, she sighed, before digging a sheet of notebook paper, one of the corners folded over at an odd angle, out of her desk drawer. She grabbed a ballpoint pen, not worrying about the color, and wrote an obnoxiously glittery and purple message back, in her neat, bubbly cursive. Her letters were just on the line, as always, and she wondered how her message could look so composed, when she herself was not.

“Tell me everything.” She wrote, underlining everything thrice so Harry would get the point. Harry tended to avoid confiding actual concerns in anyone unless instructed specifically to do so, while oversharing all the mundane details of his life, and she had no doubt that he’d try to keep this information quiet as well, if not told to talk about it. “Stay safe and don’t go anywhere alone. Love, H.” She folded up the paper carefully, along the blue lines laid out neatly across it, before handing it to Hedwig.

“I’ll open the window.” She said, to the owl, who adjusted the letter in her claws as Hermione went to the window, unlocking it and pulling it open wide enough for Hedwig to fit through. Hedwig, as soon as the window was open, sped away, leaving nothing but the faint scent of owl behind to prove that she had been there at all.

Hermione trudged back to her desk, nearly collapsing into her chair as she rubbed at her forehead. Voldemort was back. This definitely qualified as a panic moment.

And, as Hermione often did in panic moments, she came up with a plan. It wasn’t a nice plan, not in any sense of the word, she thought, but it was a plan that covered the bases well. It was a plan she’d entertained, in some part, as a last resort since they’d learned about memory modification in History of Magic, and she was glad, in part, that she’d managed to stay awake in that class all those years, despite Binns’ droning.

And now, it appeared, it was time for a last resort.

Her wand lay at the end of her desk, untouched since she’d gotten home, and she picked it up again, feeling the familiar thrum of magic in her veins rise. Yes. She had to do this. It had to be done. She set the wand down again, and picked up one of the books she’d left half read, during Easter holidays, and opened to the page she’d bookmarked.

Falling headfirst into a story other than hers, for a short while, sounded like a splendid idea.

* * *

The major concern, she decided, was how.

She knew the what, the when, and the where-- the memory modification, as erased memories were far tougher to retrieve, would have to be done by the end of summer holidays, and it would have to be done at home, so that her parents wouldn’t suspect anything. She knew the why-- if Voldemort was on the rise, it was no short leap to the fact that Muggleborns, and their Muggle families, would be in grave danger.

The how was the only question.

She’d cooked up several ideas, each more ridiculous than the last, and had found faults with them immediately, tossing them aside into a corner of her mind reserved for failed ideas that might one day be fixed up and repackaged into a new plan. A truly great mind never lets go of an idea, her father had told her once, because any idea that seems worthless will almost certainly be useful late on. And, ironically enough, it was one of those ideas that became the final plan. She’d have to thank her father, when it was all over, for giving her the idea, in his own way.

Now, all that remained was to put it into practice.

“Hermione!” Her mother called, from the master bedroom down the hallway. “Darling, it’s eleven-thirty! Please turn off the lights!”

“Five more minutes, Mum!” Hermione called out, heart sinking at the thought that she might not have this much longer. It was all for the best, she told herself, and quite sharply too. This needed to be done. It was the only way. That quieted the sadness within her, and it dared not rear its ugly head for the rest of the night, which she spent working by the light of the sun shaped nightlight that her parents had plugged into her wall when she was three years old, and she hadn’t had the heart to take down yet.

Some more time, her heart begged, when she tucked the papers covered in hastily penciled notes into one of her favorite books two hours later, but Hermione ignored the pleading, and went right to bed.

If this was to work how it needed to, she would need her sleep.

* * *

The day had come, and too soon for her liking, but she supposed she would never quite be completely at peace with the idea of what she was about to do.

She was going to modify her parents’ memories to an unheard of extent, and at her skill level, it was dangerous, but certainly not impossible. She would just have to have faith in her own ability, and in her parents’ strength, and proceed with the best intentions in mind. Her parents had always told her she was a uniquely smart girl, and perhaps that unique smartness would be what would save them from what she was sure would not stop at a few skirmishes.

No, this would be big, and judging by how bad it had gotten, from the books she had found on the subject and from the way both that Professor and Mrs. Potter got quite anxious around any reminder of the First War, written or physical, she had absolutely no confidence that her parents would be left alone, to their own devices, civilians or not. She had found horrifying records of Muggles tortured to (and, in some cases, past) death for information on their magical offspring or relatives, and she had no reason to suspect that fourteen years away from the murder business would have improved Voldemort’s attitude or methods.

This would be big, and her parents needed to be saved, which is why she was standing behind them as they took their Saturday afternoon naps, her mother’s head resting on her father’s shoulder as they slept peacefully, each half in possession of the other’s blankets. She would miss seeing them like this, she thought, and as if summoned forth by the thought, tears welled up in her eyes. But, even through her tears, she was able to see that her wand was pointed truly at its targets.

She had no memory of speaking the incantation itself, upon later reflection, but she did remember vanishing herself from all the photographs, and leaving the house she’d grown up in behind, wand and small, beaded bag full of her possessions in hand, checking to make sure her parents were still safely asleep before shutting the door behind her. She smiled softly at the thought of them still cuddled up to each other, finally letting the tears free as she walked down the street, head down and grieving the loss of something her parents didn’t even know they’d lost.

It was good that they hadn’t woken, despite all the commotion she’d caused, because while Robert and Jean Granger had a fifteen year old daughter, Wendell and Monica Wilkins did not.

**Author's Note:**

> Lai and I love hearing your feedback! Leave a comment, or send us asks on tumblr at [ yamibakuraofficial (Lai) ](http://yamibakuraofficial.tumblr.com) or [desiprongspotter (Sriram)](http://desiprongspotter.tumblr.com)!


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